Lively, entertaining reviews of, and essays on, old and newer films and everything relating to them, written by professional author William Schoell.

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

SECOND FEATURE: THE BEST OF THE 'B' FILMS

SECOND FEATURE: The Best of the 'B' Films. John Cocchi. Citadel Press;1991. 

A big over-sized paperback from Citadel Press, John Cocchi's Second Feature is a very entertaining look at some of the best -- and a few of the worst -- "B" movies ever made. While I faithfully look at the schedule for Turner Classic Movies (and even look at many of the movies), a lot of the pics in this volume escaped me; even film buffs will find a lot that is new to them in Second Feature. The book is dedicated to The Cooperative Film Society at Joe's Place (1967 - 1982) -- as well as to Joe Judice and Chris Steinbrunner - and an interesting aspect of the book is that Cocchi occasionally relates how members of the society reacted (both positively and negatively) to some of the films he writes about in his book. Second Feature is divided into sections by film genre, and lists many different films with a pithy write-up on each with background details. There are loads and loads of great photographs, many full-page. An obvious labor of love and lots of fun for B movie enthusiasts! 

Verdict: Great! ***1/2.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow--that does look interesting, especially with the still from the original "Captain America" serial on the cover (any idea if that stuff' available anywhere?).

William said...

You can probably find stills from just about anything on ebay or ioffer.com, or check out Movie Star News and Jerry Ohlinger's Movie Material Store -- they both have web sites you can find if you google them. Thanks for your comment!